


Background

by seekingsquake



Series: Drunk on Love [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, F/M, Implied Drinking and Driving, past relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 15:51:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3942571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekingsquake/pseuds/seekingsquake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce's life revolved around her, even after she had gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Background

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the song The Background by Third Eye Blind.
> 
> All characters are property of Marvel. I don't own a thing.  
> Please do not repost or reupload this piece anywhere without consent. If you ask, I'm sure we can work something out :]

He stares up at the ceiling, watches the flash of headlights move back and forth across the walls as cars drive by outside. The window’s been open for weeks, and it’s starting to get a little too cold for it now, but he doesn’t care enough to close it. He needs the sound of the wind, and the rain, and the cars driving by. At one point he hears voices outside. He can’t make out what they’re saying, but he hears a woman’s laughter and he feels sick with sadness. Sick with envy. Everything feels muted after that.

It’s best not to think about it.

*

On Friday nights he puts on his jeans and a coat and walks up Haight Street to the convenience store on the corner. He buys a bottle of red wine, a bag of Skittles, and a pack of smokes. When he’s walking sometimes he thinks he can feel her beside him, can hear her voice in his ears, and he slows down, savours it. He shoves his hands in his pockets and tries very hard not to miss her fingers twined with his, tries not to miss the way she’d kick the stray pine cones and swing their arms and sing at the top of her voice even though it’s always late.

The cashier doesn’t mention it for weeks, but finally he asks, “Where’s that crazy girl of yours? Fridays aren’t the same without you guys telling me jokes.”

Bruce can’t even think of any words for a long time, can only watch as the cashier scans the wine. $24.95. Same as always. “She’s gone. It’s not the same for me, either.”

They don’t speak after that, and Bruce’s Fridays play out in silence. He walks home with the Skittles in his pocket, a cigarette between his lips, and the neck of the wine bottle clenched in his fist. He smokes half the pack by morning, but doesn’t touch the wine. He only buys red because that’s what she liked. He doesn’t drink anymore.

There are six bottles in his pantry, all untouched. Every Friday, there’s another.

*

Sometimes he thinks he sees her across the street, in the reflection of a store window, in a car passing by. Sometimes he thinks he hears someone call her name. He’s dreamed of her almost every night, even though he hasn’t seen her since the hospital. He thinks he sees her everywhere, but he doesn’t. He knows he doesn’t. She’s gone.

She’s gone.

*

Tony calls him every day, and finally Bruce picks up.

“So? What’re your plans for August? The gang’s thinking of a road trip or something, if you’re in.”

“I was thinking if I saved up enough I could rent a place down in Oregon. Betty always wanted to spend a summer on the coast, you know?”

Tony doesn’t say anything for a long time. Finally he manages a quiet, “Bruce… I can get you some help, if you want.”

Bruce hangs up. He doesn’t answer the next time Tony calls.

*

She comes to him in his sleep, tries to speak to him, but he can never hear her over the sound of horns blaring and screeching tires, can never make out the shapes her lips make in the glaring white light that comes from somewhere behind her head. He hangs onto all her words even though he doesn’t know what they are, hangs on to what she routinely says to him while they lie in bed together. Routinely said to him while they laid in bed together. Hangs onto her words, but only the ones he hopes she’s saying. The same ones he hung onto before. Before she was gone. Before she was just an apparition in his dreams.

When he wakes up, he hears his neighbour through the window. Her voice is light when she says, “Love you, have a good day!” and that light tone sits like lead in his gut.  _Love you_  light, casual, like it could be said to anyone by anyone and be true. But Bruce… Bruce will never say it and mean it ever again. They were a life sentence, handed down to him the moment he realized that they were true.  _Love you_  as if they could ever be said to anyone other than Betty. He doesn’t sleep again for four days.

*

Clint gets him out of the house finally, after months of hiding away. Clint even manages to get him out with a girl, and it goes okay at first. He feels pretty alright about it, about her, but her nose crinkles when she laughs in a way that makes him think of Betty when they were at the zoo that one time, so he doesn’t call her back. He goes out with a different girl, but she says, “No but wait,” when she’s telling stories, and Betty used to do that so he doesn’t call her either. He goes out with a third girl and he gets as far as kissing her, but he’s running his fingers through her hair when he’s assaulted violently by a memory.

Holding Betty’s hair off the mattress as the nurse fluffs her pillow, her skin pale and bruised, her eyes tired. Holding Betty’s hair as she vomits into a kidney basin after slowly eating a little cup of green jello. Holding Betty’s hair as kisses her and she cries. Running his fingers through Betty’s hair as he lays beside her, squished close to her on the hospital bed, telling her, “Shut up, of course,” when she asks if he still loves her.

“Really?”

“I would never lie to you.”

He can still feel her back pressed against his chest, can still feel her skin even though it’s been nearly nine months.

He doesn’t call the third girl back, and he doesn’t leave his bedroom for six days.

*

He sees the world moving around him, sees the way that everything goes right back to normal. It’s been a year since the night that sent everything spiralling out of control, and everyone’s back to normal. Everyone but him.

He’s got a pantry full of wine that he can’t even stand to look at, let alone drink. People have stopped commenting on her absence, almost like she’s never been there at all. People have stopped commenting on the dark circles under his eyes, almost as if they’ve always been a part of him. He doesn’t talk to women because something about them always makes him think of her, and when he thinks of her he feels an unbearable stab of  _everything_  before it gives way to a numb sort of emptiness.

One day he sees her. She’s sitting on the patio of a restaurant with a man and a glass of red wine, and she’s laughing, and she looks just like she did the day everything fell apart, right before they stumbled into their car and his mouth was clumsy with wine and her words were slurred. Her laugh sounds the same way it did when it made him take his bleary eyes off the road and look at her, and he swears she’s even wearing the same colour blouse.

He stands there, staring, feeling both overwhelming pain and nothing at all, and she looks up from her date. Her eyes look in his direction, but don’t stop on him. They scan over him and move on as if she didn’t see him, as if he’s background noise.

He supposes that he is.

She drinks her wine, looks at her date, and she’s gone. He’s nothing to her now, insignificant in the scheme of her life, background scenery. It doesn’t matter, the whole last year, that he held onto her, that she was always surrounding him, that her presence was more felt in his life than he was, even after she had gone. He’s been a background player since the accident.

He hears a voice very softly in his head say  _let her go_ , and for a second it sounds like her. But then he’s not so sure. Maybe it was him all along.


End file.
